1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to an image forming apparatus, such as a copier or printer, which adopts an electrophotographic system, and particularly to a cleaning device for cleaning a charging roll that charges the surface of an image carrier to be rotationally driven and to an image forming apparatus including such a cleaning device.
2. Related Art
A contact charging system that charges an image carrier by directly contacting a conductive charging roll with the image carrier is mainly used in recent days as a charging device of an image forming apparatus, such as a copier or printer, which adopts an electrophotographic system, because generation of ozone or nitrogen oxide can be reduced to a great extent and such as system has good power supply efficiency.
In such a contact charging type charging device, the charging roll and image carrier are always in contact with each other, and thus friction between the charging roll and a photoreceptor causes a charging history on the charging roll surface to occur when storing for a long period at the shipping stage of the image forming apparatus. Additionally, a conductive material coated in the surface layer of the charging roll oozes, causing the problem of adherence of the conductive material on the surface of the image carrier.